Background: Vitiligo is a dermatological disorder of unknown etiology with a common incidence in southern Iran. Presence of autoantibodies to melanocyte antigens suggested an autoimmune basis of the disease. Objective: In this study, the presence of rheumatoid factor (RF) in sera and skin biopsies of vitiligo patients was investigated. Methods: The presence of RF in sera of 35 vitiligo and 32 n...

Root-knot nematodes, Meloidogyne spp., are one of the important plant parasitic nematodes of tomato in the world. The most suitable control method of plant parasitic nematodes is the use of resistance sources and tolerant cultivars. In the earlier studies, the results showed thatonly 2% (19 out of 537 varieties) were resistant and tolerant to the root knot nematodes. In the supplementary studie...

PURPOSE We report initial ex vivo and in vivo studies using bipolar radiofrequency (RF) ablation of porcine kidneys. An internal ground electrode is positioned in the kidney opposite the RF electrode, resulting in ablation of all the intervening renal tissue. MATERIALS AND METHODS Ex vivo preparations of 10 porcine kidneys were perfused continuously with Ringer's solution and treated with eit...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the diagnostic and pathogenetic significance of IgA rheumatoid factor (RF) subclasses in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Rheumatoid factors of the IgA class and IgA1 and IgA2 subclasses were measured by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay in 58 patients with RA, 31 patients with other rheumatic diseases, 30 non-rheumatic individuals with increased concentrations of IgA...

The spatiotemporal features of the "static" receptive field (RF), as revealed with flashing bars or spots, determine other RF properties. We examined how some of these static RF features vary with contrast and contrast adaptation in area V1 of the anesthetized macaque monkey. RFs were mapped with light and dark flashing bars presented at three different contrasts, with the low and medium contra...

Objective(s)Staphylococcus aureus is a prevalent pathogen worldwide. Methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA), which is usually multi-resistant in hospitals, has been a daunting challenge for clinicians for more than half a century. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to determine the relative frequency (RF) of MRSA in different regions of Iran.Materials and MethodsSearch terms...

A large body of evidence now indicates that the amount of mercury released from dental amalgam fillings can be significantly accelerated by exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs) such as common mobile phones and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Studies performed on the increased microleakage of dental amalgam restorations after exposure to RF-EMFs have further supported th...

Rheumatoid factors (RF), autoantibodies that bind the Fc region of IgG, are one of the major diagnostic marker in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) but occur with lower frequency also in other infectious and inflammatory conditions. Through positional cloning of the previously described quantitative trait locus (QTL) Rf1 in congenic and advanced intercrossed rats, we identified the Ig lambda light chai...

Given a group G, RF-theory constructs a new group RF(G) and an action RF(G) → Isom(XG) by isometries of RF(G) on a canonically associated R-tree XG. We give an overview mostly focusing on the more basic aspects of this theory, up to and including the universal property of RF-groups and their associated R-trees.